The tone is a mix of surprise and anxiety. The effect is the same as if my interlocutor were asking what I had done to be sent to prison.

They're good questions to ask of a guy who's still new to town — I've been here just 14 months. And given the very public discussion we're having about the challenges that face Rockford — you can recite the particulars — I suppose it's natural to wonder what on earth would bring to Rockford people who have choices as to where they want to live and work.

Until recently, my answers have been honest but polite. Rockford checks all the necessary boxes: It's a Midwestern city close to my wife's and my Chicago roots.

I'm a Yankee to my core, and although over nearly 35 years I've lived North, South, East and West, my heart belongs to this part of the country. My family has made friends and likes the public amenities the city offers, and I enjoy people with whom I work. And the challenges of crime and urban decay are among the things that make this a good news town.

From now on, however, I'm going to answer a bit differently.

The turning point was the Thursday before last, when 1,400 or so people showed up at the Coronado Performing Arts Center for the Engagement Summit hosted by Transform Rockford, the initiative designed to improve the region's economic and social health through lasting change driven by a shared vision and values.

That number, 1,400, is not a misprint. The Engagement Summit was a monster event. What I saw that evening was a community united in its desire to make something better of itself.

To be sure, all the hard work lies ahead. The brutal facts about which the project's founder, Woodward Inc. CEO Tom Gendron, speaks so passionately can't be wished away.

And of course, most of the hard work will involve people.

No surprise there. I had been in town only a few days last autumn when people inside and outside the News Tower began to chatter about the sour personalities and dysfunctional relationships that make it so hard to get things done here.

It was clear that Thursday night, and again last week when Gendron delivered the keynote at the annual meeting of the Rockford Area Economic Development Council, that the Transform Rockford team gets that and that they're willing to corral the bullies who lead with their egos, civility be damned, and to silence the serial f-bombers who somehow confuse vulgarity and volume for rational debate.

They deserve to be called out. Most of us learn early in life — age 12 sounds about right — that coarse behavior doesn't intimidate. It doesn't persuade. It merely alienates.

In the end, if Transform Rockford is as effective as I hope it will be, the victory will go not to the biggest loudmouths. It will go, instead, to a soft-spoken engineer whose willingness to speak truth about those who wield power produced a broad social movement.